1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a shock absorber control apparatus for controlling a damping force of a shock absorber provided between a body and each wheel of a vehicle.
2. Description of Related Art
An apparatus has been developed which controls the damping force of a shock absorber provided between the body and the wheel at a vehicle corresponding to a running condition thereof, such as the vehicle posture or the road surface condition. Regarding the vehicle posture, a control apparatus is proposed which sets the damping force of shock absorber HARD when, for example, the vehicle quickly starts, quickly brakes, and slaloms, thereby restricting generation of squatting, diving or rolling. Also, regarding the road surface condition, when the vehicle runs on a good road surface, the damping force of shock absorber is set SOFT so as to expect an improved comfortable ride. On the other hand, when running on a bad road, the damping force is set MEDIUM to expect an improved grounding efficiency.
In the conventional control method, by judging a vague and confronting evaluation factor, such as the comfortable ride or steering stability, with a constant threshold value, the damping force of shock absorber is set. As a result, priority of any evaluation factor needs to be decided, which is inefficient. Also, there is no apparatus which finely distinguishes the surface condition of a road in which the vehicle is driven so as to adjust the damping force of shock absorber.
Furthermore, when all the detected values in the running condition of the vehicle are less than a predetermined value, it is required to quickly restore them to the damping force in the specified region, which is not considered to be added as one of the control rules.